2013 F1 season

The FIA may delay the introduce of four-cylinder 1.6-litre engines in F1, the World Motor Sport Council confirmed today.

A statement issued by the FIA said: “In consultation with the main stakeholders, and following the outcome of this consultation, a fax vote by the WMSC could be considered by 30 June latest to redefine the implementation date of these technical regulations”.

The WMSC confirmed the planned rules changes for 2013 included the new engines, with “high pressure gasoline injection up to 500 bar with a maximum of 12,000 rpm, with extensive energy management and energy recovery systems (now known as ERS)”.

It also promised revised aerodynamic rules “based on 2011 rules, with modifications in order to improve the aerodynamic efficiency: together with the power train rules, this will enable a 35% reduction in fuel consumption”.

The heights of the cars’ noses will be altered for safety purposes and the number of transmission units teams may used will be further reduced to cut costs.

The minimum weight should be, as I have argued before, a “dry” weight. Weighing the car without having fuel, water and oil in it, would really help because a low fuel consumption would now be desirable as you would be able to save weight. Voila! Efficiency is quicker, and you do not have to force the teams to use a special fuel management system.

Yes exactly. If they’re making it green they should not increase the weight I guess. On the unrealistic side I would love to see them ditch all the politics and propose unlimited weight deductions, so we could see ultralight F1 cars and possibly pass on the technology to road cars to save fuel as well !!

I think the FIA is increasing the weight to add more competitiveness to the game (and therefore increase the TV ratings). Because the poorest teams cant afford such light-weight components and designs as the big teams, the FIA is forcing the top teams to bring their cars weight close to the weight of the bottom and middle teams. On the other and, if a team can build a competitive car with only 620kg, if the minimum is raised to 640, the team can spend 20kg for the improvement of reliability and drivers safety

I dont have enough knowledge to refute your point. By the contrary, is very likely for you to be right. In any case, is natural that the bottom teams struggle to keep their weight down with their limited funds and limited resources. So, raising the minimum weight will, at least, give them a more comfortable position, will give them a bigger “breathing space”.

Someone ‘Photoshopped’ a car with larger wheels, and it looked ridiculous. But if they insist on changing the engines, I don’t want them revving any lower than the GP2 cars, because they do sound great.

But what had low noses got to do with those?
Plus, Ralf Schumacher’s car had a high nose. And in that particular case it was the high nose responsible for the crash, because it made the car slide onto the back/rear tyre of Barrichello’s car.

What Damon (not Damon Smedley) said. Everyone of those accidents are directly due to unusually high closing speed onto the back of a car and climbing some part of it (wheel to wheel or the Ralf crash climbing over the low back end after the rear wing of Barrichello broke). Almost every wheel-wheel hard hit causes at least one car to get soem air, its the nature of bouncing a giant rubber pad (tire) off another giant rubber pad.

Hey Spaulding, it’s not the bouncing off tires that launches a car, it’s the fact that the wheel of the car in front is rolling forward, as is the wheel of the car behind, so when a wheel of the car behind hits the one in front it tries (and usually succeeds) to climb the front cars tire. Basically, the wheel of the car behind is rotating at road speed and hits a surface (the leading wheel) that is also rotating at road speed. The wheel behind climbs right up and the car is launched.

I disagree with that, Andrew, rpm REALLY matters. For the same torque, an increase in rpm means an increase in horsepower, as horsepower is basically the integral of torque over time. Ignoring friction (that would be nice!), if you keep the same torque (again, that would be nice) and double the rpm you will have double the horsepower. I know this is not real life and I am making this too simple, but I hope you get the gist.

A V8 2.4 F1 naturally aspirated engine does not have any more physical torque than a 2.4 V8 naturally aspirated road car engine (typically around 280Nm). An F1 car can multiply that torque (by a factor of 3 if a road car engine typically revs to 6000 rpm) by having much lower gearing and by having the torque peak very high up in the rev range.

A 1.6 turbo engine will not only have vastly more torque than a 2.4 V8, but will also have more torque throughout the whole of its rev range.

The reasoning for “revising” these engine regs was to make the cars “Road Relevant”. 12000rpm 500 bar injection? If people wanted to see a road relevant development then watch GT cars or WTCC. I’m all for F1 developing technologies, I actually think KERS will prove better when output/deployment is increased and I’m not against deveoping other ERS ideas, but to change the core design like this for me is a bad idea. Hopefully there can be a compromise reached, but the last thing i want is a 4 pot 1600 sounding like a prius through a megaphone.

12000 RPMs is a joke, in my opinion. That’s getting down to IndyCar level, yet not even touching their max speed. 18000 is beautiful, but still leaves me wanting because I know they could do much more.

Exactly, turbos are bolt-on Horsepower, higher RPM, better breathing these are things that need development that can benefit road going engines, 12000 rpm can already bought for less than $10000 in motorcycles.
The Tifosi still wave the flag for Ferrari,not for Alonso or Massa, why should they bother when F1 becomes a virtual 1design series, and what will it mean if they do, best pit-stops?

find a way of capping power output at a particular level and teams will pursue efficiency in a quest for performance.

I disagree.

Find a way of capping power input and teams will pursue efficiency in a quest for performance.

Of course, capping RPM (and, in the case of turbo’ed engines, “boost”) effecively does that, but IMHO a better way would be to remove many of the current restrictions and just limit the maximum fuel input per second, and possibly the total fuel capacity.

Why not? They are turbo engines, so they won’t be much less powerful then todays engines.
If the KERS power limit is raised on the same time they implement the turbo engines, which is very likely, i don’t think the cars will be any slower then they are now.
That is if they don’t change much to the aerodynamic regulations and tyres of cause.

From what I’ve read, that figure of 800bhp includes the power output of the KERS, meaning about 650bhp when the kers is not engaged (most of the lap) and an extra 150 when it is. Sounds like they are limiting the boost pressure way too much to me, otherwise they could have way more than 650 or even 800bhp.

Personally I Ddnt see whats so wrong with a equivalency formula for two different engine architechtures in F!. Sure, it wont be perfect, and it would in no way make them completely equal, but hey, who honestly wants completely identical engines anyway. I want to see things like Turbos dominating in Interlagos, but stuggling in the harsh humidity in Malaysia.

The back and forth between the low revving turbo I4s and high revving NA V8 would bring an extra level of competion into the sport – is that such a bad thing?

I find it infuriating that nearly every time F1 goes through a rule change, the cars get slower. Cars seem to be getting faster as the years go on in other motorsport series, yet F1 cars were faster 7 years ago than they are now.

Im all for F1 being road-relevant, because that could mean we get better performing road-legal cars, but why cant they be blindingly fast and road-relevant?

Safety gets better every year, and every new track that is built seems to be wider and have more acreage of runoff than the last, so why are the cars not allowed to evolve in terms of speed year over year? Im not saying it needs to be unlimited but the gap between GP2 and F1 is just too small right now.

The biggest driver of overall lap time has been aerodynamics, as cornering speeds increase. Aero has been cut back on for all sorts of reasons, firstly because it is possible for the cars to become too fast to be safe regardless of how much run-off you put on a track (particularly in corners with high G-forces), and also because a greater reliance on aerodynamics is generally thought to reduce overtaking.

It would be nice to have engines with masses of power like the 1980s but the teams can’t “unlearn” everything that they have learned in the last 30 years with regard to aerodynamics.

I don’t think the engine changes will “ruin” F1, but I do think they’re the wrong type of change. Teams should be allocated a fixed amount of fuel and told to build the best engine possible to make use of it.

Totally agreee with you, and I didnt actually mean to imply that the engine change rule would be a detriment to the sport. Im fine with small 4 cylinder engines, in fact, but I feel like they should have more power than the “650+ BHP thats been touted. It’s just dissappointing that, as you said, the cars get faster and faster due to aero developments, and the FIA has shown an affinity for freezing or restricting engine development/power to counteract this, instead of revising aero rules in a way that will actually work.

Fully agree with that. Although I would probably want to take that further and go with allowed energy input in kW hours and leave it to the team what kind of fuel or to pre charge batteries or whatever.

Totally with you on that BasCB, exactly the same thing I’ve said a few times now.

With a fixed amount of energy to play with but no restrictions on fuel type then we’d see some real innovation that could actually be useful to the world. Not only could significant development be made moving away from hydrocarbon based fuels to keep the greens happy (me included) but we’d also start to see massive differences between the cars.

The problem is that the innovation involved would be very expensive, which is why it is extremely unlikely to happen in the current cost cutting world.

I agree with the idea as well, and regarding cost — some manufacturers already spend a fortune exploring alternate engines for Le Mans, so road relevancy can to some extent counter cost.

With engine manufacturers increasingly supplying multiple teams, a free engine formula but with limited energy input, combined with a cap on the cost of said engines and a requirement to supply at least a minimum number of teams on request, might work.

With income from F1 projected to be nearly 2 Billion ( 2,000 Million ) dollars next year surely we should not be fobbed of by the excuse that engine development is is to expensive, the problem is that half the pie goes to management ie.Bernie and the TV distributors whose only expenses are running an office to negotiate sales and collect the loot.the other half gets divided amongst the 24 teams who have to design, build and race the cars. You would think that 100 million dollars a year would be more than enough to cover the costs of organising a calender and selling the rights to a product whose demand exceeds supply. When the Concorde comes up for renewal the teams should demand at least 90 percent of the take and maybe then we can again have the excitement of seeing teams bring new and different engine configurations with different power bands and varying reliability contribute to success or failure, not just aerodynamic configurations with no practical value elsewhere. Of course making best use of a fixed amount of fuel would be part of it and efficiencies developed would benefit passenger vehicles also.

“Safety gets better every year, and every new track that is built seems to be wider and have more acreage of runoff than the last, so why are the cars not allowed to evolve in terms of speed year over year?”

Your comment says it – every NEW track built. While new tracks come in nearly every year, there are still plenty of old tracks that just cannot take the ever-increasing speed/acceleration; Monaco is the topical answer.

But even for tracks like monaco, safety improvements must have been made in the last decade, and they’re proposing that more be made for next year.

Also, that was just one part of my argument. Even on classic tracks that havent had (or havent been able to accomodate) new safety revisions, the cars are getting stronger and safer, and the driver’s helmet and restraint systems are getting safer too. Simply put, F1 is getting safer overall (obviously a good thing), but it isnt getting faster.

I think it’s a bit strange that the FIA makes a big song and dance about announcing major rule changes ages in advance, and then as they get a bit nearer suddenly they either get postponed, watered down, or completely ignored.

We had the ground effect aero rule “changes” and the engine “changes” for 2013 and of both these major aspects the first one has been severely altered by the teams because they think they can achieve an equivalent or better effect in a more conventional and less expensive way, and we have the engine package which despite apparently having been locked into place for ages seems to stir massive discontent with most of the teams whenever it is even mentioned.

Why is it always like this?

Is it the case that even in the era of unprecedented FOTA cooperation the teams still can’t remotely agree on anything, so the FIA is forced to come up with something merely to spark the teams into action by actually giving them something to unite and disagree against?

It’s an odd way to frame such important regulations, whatever the reasoning.